A greyish to brownish puffer with silvery-white lower sides, large round or oval white spots, dark bands on the head and body, a broad yellow patch below the pectoral fin, and a pale yellowish tail. Some authors refer to this species as Chelonodontops patoca.

Milkspot Toadfish,
Chelonodon patoca(Hamilton-Buchanan 1822)

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Distribution

Northern Australia from the Ashburton River, Western Australia, to Port Clinton, Queensland. Elsewhere the species occurs in the tropical, Indo-west Pacific, from East Africa to the Admiralty Islands, New Britain and the Trobriand Islands, north to China and Japan, south to northern Australia.

Individuals or small groups inhabit muddy, sandy and shelly areas in estuaries, mangroves, and the brackish reaches of rivers and streams. The species may occasionally occur near shallow inshore reefs.

Features

Dorsal fin 9-10; Anal fin 8; Pectoral fin 15-16.Body depth, 2.6-3.0 in SL, eye diameter 3.0-4.3 in HL; snout ~2.2-2.4 in HL; back evenly arched; interorbital space flattened; nasal organs appear as a round depression before the eyes with a low fleshy rim forming a short triangular flap on the front and rear edges.Skin mostly smooth with a patch of spinules on the back extending from behind the interorbital space nearly to dorsal-fin origin; similar patches of spinules present on the throat and abdomen.Caudal fin truncate to slightly rounded.

Beumer, J.P. 1978. Feeding ecology of four fishes from a mangrove creek in north Queensland, Australia. Journal of Fish Biology 12: 475-490.

Blaber, S.J.M., Young, J.W. & Dunning, M.C. 1985. Community structure and zoogeographic affinities of the coastal fishes of the Dampier region of north-western Australia. Australian Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research 36: 247-266.

Hamilton, F. 1822. An Account of the Fishes Found in the River Ganges and its Branches. Edinburgh : Archibald Constable 405 pp., pls 1-39.

Hutchins, B. 2004. Fishes of the Dampier Archipelago, Western Australia. Records of the Western Australian Museum, Supplement 66: 343–398.

Kottelat, M. 2013. The fishes of the inland waters of southeast Asia: a catalogue and core bibiography of the fishes known to occur in freshwaters, mangroves and estuaries. Raffles Bulletin of Zoology Supplement 27: 1-663. Ref. available, open access (as Chelonodontops patoca)

Matsuura, K. 2015. Taxonomy and systematics of tetraodontiform fishes: a review focusing primarily on progress in the period from 1980 to 2014. Ichthyological Research 62: 72-113. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10228-014-0444-5 Open access